https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18412256
02 December 2024
Overall: 4 Stars
Story: 3 Stars
Visuals: 5 Stars
Characters: 3 Stars
I have been a fan of the Alien franchise since I was a young teenager and saw Aliens. I loved it. Going back, I watched Alien and was suitably scared by the tension and dramatic story telling. We then had the doldrums years with Alien 3 and Resurrection (which have grown on me in subsequent viewings especially if watched back to back) followed by the interesting tangent of Alien Vs Predator and Alien Vs Predator: Requiem. The first was fine but didn’t spark any joy in me. The second though, was right up my alley. Especially the ending! As a long time Tyranids player I finally had my dream of seeing Guard V Nids on screen and my only lament was this wasn’t the entire movie.
Please make that movie. Someone. Anyone?
I digress. Let’s talk about Romulus and why it is a solid addition to the canon of the Alien-verse. What caught my attention right out of the gate was the nice contained stakes. Just like back in the original, which I really like the descriptor of “Space Truckers find a demon”, the characters in Romulus have a very clear concise and relatable goal – they want off the hell-hole of a planet that the Waylen-Yutani corp has built.
The main character, Rain Carradine, just wants to live on a planet where you can see a sunset.
I feel you Rain. I feel you… looking out my window at a dreary West Coast sky.
Rain has worked off her twelve thousand hours of indentured servitude which I assume she was born into since she is at most twentyish… although I can’t be sure. 12k hours is about six years of fulltime work at forty hours a week so when she goes to the administration office to get her ticket off world and is informed that the company has increased all worker hour requirements to 24k hours it really stings. It is not unexpected though. Anyone who has watched an Alien movie knows that WT doesn’t play fair. Which also makes me wonder if 40 hours a week is what they extract from their peons.
Our plucky if morose protagonist is then contacted by a friend who has a cunning plan to get them off world. There is a derelict ship passing through the system. They can just hop up there and steal some cryotubes and be on their way to a new home – middle fingers to WT all the way there.
Of course nothing goes to plan. The derelict ship is infested with xenomorphs. Action adventure, several bad choices, and a lot of corporate evil ensue. All of it is fairly predictable, which isn’t a bad thing. You’re watching an Alien movie – there are certain things you are here for. Gruesome body horror – check. Outright corporate evil – check. Characters completely outclassed – check. What stood out to me was that each character choice was coherent. I didn’t once find myself thinking ‘You utter moron!’ which is rare in horror movies let alone an Alien movie. The characters were all reacting to the information they had in believable ways. Tension was built with each scene and structured around the audience knowing more about how xenomorphs work than the characters did. Any mistakes they made were around not understanding the real consequences of their actions.
Also, the visuals were absolutely jaw dropping.
There were several scenes with facehuggers that were both truly tense and terrifying while also visually gorgeous.
Overall, I had a great time watching the movie and would watch it again.